THE TRANSLATION OF SAINT CUTHBERT

BEDE relates, in the life of St. Cuthbert, that
the saint charged his disciples before his death, that rather than
ever fall under the yoke of schismatics or infidels, they would, when
threatened with such a calamity, take with them his mortal remains,
and choose some other dwelling.1 In the year 875 the province of
Northumberland was so cruelly infested by Danish pirates, and
Lindisfarne was so much exposed to their continual ravages, that
Sardulf the bishop, Eadred the abbot, and the community of the monks,
left that place, and carrying with them that sacred treasure,
wandered to and fro for seven years.2 In 882 they rested with it at
Concester, a small town a few miles from the Roman wall, where the
bishop’s see continued one hundred and thirteen years, as
Camden remarks. Both king Alfred and the Danish leader granted peace
for a month to all persons that fled to the saint’s shrine, and
Alfred gave to his church all the land that lies between the Tyne and
the Tees, as Matthew of Westminster, or whoever is the author of that
compilation called the Flores of the English history, assures
us. In 995, in the fresh inroads of the Danes, bishop Aldunc retired
with the saint’s body to Rippon, and four months after to
Durham, a place strong by its natural situation, but not habitable,
till the people of the country, on this occasion, cut down the wood,
and raised a small church, and cells for the monks. The body of the
saint remained without being tainted with the least corruption, as
Hoveden and all our other historians prove it to have been found
whenever it was visited; and many miracles were wrought at his
shrine, accounts of which are found in the above-mentioned
historians, and others, especially in the History of the Church of
Durham, written in 1100, not by Turgot, the prior, as Selden
imagined, but by Simeon, a monk of that house, as Mr. Bedford proves
in his accurate edition of this work. The author relates how, a
little before his time, bishop William had, by the authority of the
Conqueror, placed the monks of Weremouth and Jarrow in the Cathedral
at Durham. A yearly memorial of the translation of St. Cuthbert’s
body to Durham was kept on this day. See his life, and Simeon of
Durham, Hist. Ecclesiæ Dunelmensis, published by Tho. Bedford,
Londini, 1732. Hearne’s Ductor Historicus, on Lindisfarne, t.
2, p. 372; and the anonymous monk of Durham, in 1060, author of the
History of the Transactions and Miracles of St. Cuthbert, in Mabillon
sæc. Ben. 4, part 2, p. 275.